Monday, January 28, 1985

Only in America. With ironic boasts of how they’d “check[ed] their egos at the door” SF at the behest of producer Quincy Jones, a slew of U.S. singers lent their chops to “We Are the World,” a charity song which thematically “could be regarded as tub-thumping for America.” KL The lyrics naively proclaimed “the problems of the starving…to be no match for the power of positive thinking.” MA Billy Joel said most of the performers didn’t care for the song and that, if memory served, it was Cyndi Lauper who said to him, “It sounds like a Pepsi commercial.’” SF

Much like the soft drink giant, though, it moved a lot of product, selling over a quarter million copies in one weekend AMG and leaping to #1 in a mere three weeks, the fastest since Elton John’s “Island Girl” in 1975. BR1 It was the only song to hit all five major Billboard charts of that time.

“World” was the U.S. counterpart of “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” a song penned by singer Bob Geldof in response to a BBC documentary he saw about the Ethiopian famine. TB He enlisted many of the U.K.’s biggest pop stars for a charity single that movingly pondered how the starving Africans would spend their holidays. The song’s 3.5 million sales were bigger than the country had even seen.

Thursday, January 10, 1985

When Grammy nominations were announced on January 10, 1985, Cyndi Lauper had the rare distinction of landing in each of the Big Four Categories. Her debut album, She’s So Unusual, received a nod for Album of the Year. Her singles Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Time After Time showed up in the Record of the Year and Song of the Year categories respectively. Lauper was acknowledge in the Best New Artist category as well. She also garnered nominations for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (for “Girls”) and Best Recording Package, making her the first female artist since Bobbie Gentry in 1967 to receive at least five Grammy nominations.

She won the Best New Artist and Best Recording Package awards. She was also honored by MTV for Best Female Video of the Year for “Girls”, which also was nominated for Video of the Year. That video introduced her fun-loving, even cartoonish persona, but also showcased her ability to deliver a hook-laden song. It went top 10 in 19 countries and hit #1 in 10 countries. WK

On the flip side, second single “Time After Time” served up Lauper’s more sensitive side. The emotional ballad hit the top ten in 15 countries. WK “Time” has been covered by everyone from Everything But the Girl to Miles Davis, “if you need further proof of her credibility.” BB

Lauper also hit the top 5 in the U.S. with She Bop and All Through the Night, making her the first female singer to land four top 5 singles from one album on the Billboard Hot 100. WK A fifth single, Money Changes Everything, was a top 40 hit. They all helped propel the album to 6 million in U.S. sales and 16 million worldwide.

Far from being a guilt pleasure, Lauper’s She’s So Unusual should be acknowledged not as “self-deprecating or even self-parodying; it’s self-congratulatory.” BB The album displays “a giddy mix of self-confidence, effervescent popcraft, unabashed sentimentality, subversiveness, and clever humor” BB and is “one of the great new wave/early MTV records.” STE